HalfHylden
by Dylan Millwood
Summary: Naruto has more than human blood in his veins, when the dormant section of his lineage awakens, he goes seeking answers and hopes of returning to normal, unaware he was followed. Character swapping like in "LoK:Defiance"
1. Prologe: A simple question

The Hylden...

Ancient history depicted them as the bitter enemies of the winged Ancients, the original vampires. They were similar to the Ancients in power, but "different in method and intention." Both wanted dominance of Nosgoth, and warred for a thousand years to claim it. The Ancients won the war, banished the Hylden to a demonic dimension, and created the nine magical Pillars of Nosgoth to keep them sealed in place. The Hylden did not go quietly. In a final act of vengeance, they managed to curse the Ancients with a thirst for blood, and eternal life turning them into Nosgoth's first vampires.

In their prison, the Hylden plotted a way to escape. Their opportunity came millennia after their banishment. The Circle of Nine, immortal sorcerors called to serve the pillars at birth when they were raised had by now been replaced on their death by human successors (since vampires were no longer born) these successors overthrew the ancient vampires and because humans were not 'competent to serve' fell to the corruption introduced by one of the Circle, Nupraptor, the Guardian of the Mind, when his beloved Ariel, the Balance Guardian, was murdered. His madness corrupted the Circle and thus the Pillars themselves. Another member of the Circle, Mortanius the Necromancer, realized what was happening and devised a plan to correct the disaster. He used the death and unlife of a nobleman named Kain to set prophecy in motion and restore the pillars to their rightful inheritors – the vampires, but at the final moment, Kain's choice not to sacrifice himself upon discovering that he is the final member of the circle to die seals the fate of the Pillars causing a rift throughout the world, sufficient to breach through the dimensions.

This was enough for a strong Hylden Lord, Hash'ak'gik, to re-enter Nosgoth and take the guise of the Sarafan Lord. He established the Hylden City as a home and base for his kind, and began to draw other Hylden back into Nosgoth. Two centuries later, the Sarafan Lord defeated Kain's vampire army outside Meridian, the capital of Nosgoth. He seized control of Nosgoth, and used the reformed Sarafan Order and the Glyph magics the Hylden created as tools to hunt down and destroy vampires. The human inhabitants of Nosgoth suffered high taxes, harsh laws and brutality under his rule, for the Sarafan Lord's agenda was to eventually purge Nosgoth of all non-Hylden races.

Two centuries after his defeat at the hands of the Sarafan Lord, Kain came back to challenge him again.

The first time their paths crossed, Kain was still far from ready. He was escaping with Umah from the Sarafan Keep when the Sarafan Lord stopped them. Kain was unpleasantly surprised to see that the Lord wielded the Soul Reaver - _Kain's _sword - and his hunger for vengeance overcame his reason; he wanted to fight there and then. The Sarafan Lord did not see Kain as a real threat, and would have killed him and Umah had she not teleported them away.

Kain continued his quest against the Sarafan Lord without really understanding who or what he was. The Hylden were long-forgotten as a race. Kain gradually learned about the Hylden, and the Sarafan Lord's agenda, as he travelled in and around Meridian.

Umah told Kain and Vorador about the Nexus Stone. The artefact had been a crucial element in the Sarafan Lord's victory over Kain, as it could protect its wearer from the Soul Reaver. Kain stole it from the Industrial Quarter, and heard about the Device in the process. Destroying the Device temporarily became his priority. He visited the Seer for assistance, but was forced to leave when the Sarafan Lord set fire to her home. Kain then went on to explore the Device and the Eternal Prison. He found two other vampires who had suffered on account of his archenemy; both more so than he. Magnus- Kain's former champion - had been robbed of his mind and sent to the Eternal Prison for trying to assassinate the Sarafan Lord. Janos Audron - the ancient enemy of the Hylden - had been imprisoned within the Device by the Lord, and used to feed the Mass. Kain poisoned the Mass, and rendered the Device useless, freeing Janos.

A history of the Sarafan Lord emerged from what Kain had been told by Umah, the Seer, the Builder and Janos, a history Kain himself had aided to write:

When Kain refused to sacrifice himself to repair the Pillar of Balance. This sealed the Pillars' fate, condemning them to collapse. The dimensional barrier between Nosgoth's Material Realm and the Demon Realm weakened substantially, and the Dark Entity was able to re-enter the Material Realm - body _and_ soul - using the Hylden Gate. He gradually began to increase his power in preparation for a full invasion. He established, or re-populated, a base (the Hylden City), and started to draw other Hylden into Nosgoth's Material Realm with him. However, it was not enough to bring his people through slowly; his aim was to purge the land of all vampires and humans. He had intended to complete and use the Device: the Hylden race's ancient weapon of destruction.

The Device was buried beneath Meridian. The Hylden General (as Kain later called him) needed to gain influence over the city's humans before he could get it up and running. At the same time, Kain had been beginning his conquest of Nosgoth. Eventually, his vampire army would have taken the capital. The Hylden General decided to create his own army, exploiting the humans' fear of Kain's forces. He rebuilt the long-defunct Sarafan order, and set himself at its head as the Sarafan Lord. Follwing Kain's defeat, the Sarafan Lord had become a dictator, and over the next two centuries, the Sarafan enforced his brutal regime while hunting and killing the remaining vampires. A few vampires became servants of the Sarafan Lord in order to save themselves. While all this was going on, the the Glyph Energy networks were being installed as a conduit for the Device.

Kain travelled to the Hylden City for his final battle with the Sarafan Lord, carrying the Nexus Stone. Their roles from two centuries ago were reversed as the Lord used the Soul Reaver against him. They fought above the Hylden Gate. Kain dropped the Nexus Stone into the gate, exposing himself to harm, but initiating the gate's closure. With this act, no more Hylden could enter Nosgoth's Material Realm, and once the gate closed completely, all Hylden already in the land would die. Janos arrived to help Kain win, seeking a small measure of revenge for himself against the Lord. He was still weak, however, and the Sarafan Lord held him off easily. He threw Janos through the gate, sealing him in the Demon Realm.

Janos' interruption allowed Kain to reclaim the Soul Reaver. With it, he finally killed the Dark Entity/Sarafan Lord. Nosgoth was Kain's for the taking.

But suppose...suppose that rather than all of them returning to Nosgoth to meet their doom after the fall of the Hylden Gate, at least ONE of the Hylden had wondered...if there was Nosgoth in the Material Realm, the Spirit Realm in which the souls of the departed resided, and the Demon Realm which served as their prison...what if there were other worlds...other places...to which they had never been and saught to witness them...

What impact could such a thought have on the world in which they'd gone and its history?


	2. Changes and travel

Naruto sighed, looking out over the sea, while they headed for the island in Kuno, anxiety gripping his features. Why did he feel this way? As he waited at the stern of the ship, he just felt as though the weight of the world were upon him...something just felt wrong to him, like seeing storm clouds on the horizon. Yet it didn't seem to steam from the shinobi world's current problems.

Why was that?

As he got into his cabbin, Naruto thought he heard something and looked around. It sounded like chanting or calling, but where was it coming from? As it got loud enough to where it could be heard as if it were being chanted by an entire stadium, Naruto realized that it was coming from within his own mind!

**"By the three houses of Knowledge, Faith and War. By Seer and Builder. By the high king, general and head. We seek our kin. Our noble blood calls out to you, rise and embrace your hidden half!"**

No sooner had the words echoed within his mind than he felt suddenly dizzy and his bones felt like they were shifting and ripping at him from the inside out and Naruto passed out from pain.

Naruto cringed as he awoke. He felt...different…and he felt kind of tired for some reason, like he had been in a marathon or something.

As the blond ninja looked at the mirror to see himself and he commented to himself…

_'Man…I really need to sleep more I look…huh?'_

Naruto looked closer at the mirror and blinked his eyes a few times and looked a bit closer, and he then looked back…and when he processed what he was seeing…it didn't take very long for the blond ninja to react.

Everyone on the ship was stunned out of their wits as the scream was heard, several of them were looking at the direction of the scream and some of the ninja on duty to quickly draw their weapons.

_'Wh…What…What the…WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ME?'_

Naruto was deep in shock as he looked at the mirror and wide awake as well, and he had very good reason to be shouting as he looked at his face…but wasn't his face at the very same time! What the heck had happened to him? He asked himself that very same question once more as he tried to see if it was indeed his face.

His skin had taken on a mummified look, like a dried-out could plainly see the odd segment of armored bone that had formed what looked like a set of horns or a natural crown on his head. It was nearly impossible to even think that the creature he'd become had any flesh from how sickly and malnourished he looked. Despite this, he still possessed visible muscle on his lean figure, but the non-skeletal hands and feet on the tips of his appendages made him feel awkward when he moved.

Opening up his jacket, Naruto's eyes widened further at the sight that greeted him: His ribs stuck out, and his spine was visible through where his vital organs should have been, as was his pelvis, barely covered by a thin layer of flesh stretched over the bone. Stretched skin on hard bony wing-like crest structures that seemed to be made to permit little limited gliding jutted out of his back that ran from his shoulder blades to curve upwards forming an arc coming from each one and had strange bone spurs protruding along his ankles and wrists and down his spine.

He raised his hands and saw that they had become claws the fingernails having sharpened themselves into razor sharp edges, his feet likewise. His ears were gone, yet he now had a pair of ear-shapped holes where they had been on ths sides of his head.

As if to add to his demonic-looking new appearance, he was in his hanyou-sennin transformation that he'd gone into in order to resist Nagato's influence after being impaled in the stomach with a chakra disruption blade during his meeting with the Rinnegan-user, and his irises had also turned eyes had turned a venomous light green with amber yellow at the very outer edges of his eyes with a black sclera.

All in all, he was shocked.

"Wha...What the HELL happened me?" Naruto asked.

As if in answer to his question, Naruto's eyes now blazed with a contaminating green fire and he felt something akin to Ino's techniques and he heard someone speaking to him.

**"Do you not seek answers, distant member of our kin? Then venture to the land in which the Hylden once dwelt, the land of Nosgoth. We shall grant you the knowlage of the glyph magic...you shall have but just enough to arrive there, in the city of Meridian. In the land of one of the forefathers to your bloodline shall your answers be found. The instructions shall only be granted by those who answer this correctly: What is "Fate" ?"**

Without thinking or even needing to, Naruto snorted "Fate's a myth invented by those too cowardly or weak-minded to choose their own path in life. That's all fate has been and ever will be!"

His eyes flared with green flame again as a second voice spoke in his mind, chuckling in amusement.

**"You are indeed of our kin in part to have such conviction in your answer. Now inscribe the symbols you see on the ground and stand in the center then repeat the chant you're told...seeing as it will take a while to gather the needed energy, the Glyph energy, into the transport glyph that will take you to where your answers reside. Make haste, for if you are discovered in your current state. All could be undone, including your life!**

Naruto paled, he didn't much like that idea. "What do I need to do then?" Naruto asked, feeling urgent.

**"You will be needing to conceal your newly-changed features, and a blade is needed where you're going to be heading. A good one at that as well. This one will do best in that task. **Stated a third voice.

With that, Naruto heard the thud of something heavy and made of metal hitting wood and he turned aroung to find a one-handed, double-bladed ax laying behind him at his feet. The pommel was set with a ruby the size of a small egg. The hilt was made of ebony metal that was wrapped with silver wire. The broad, flat blades themself were blood-red, and were scalloped near the ends, a shape reminiscent of a dragon's wing. The ax was a weapon that was ment for but one purpose: to bring pain and death to hack through armor, bone, and sinew as easily as through a buldging sack.

**"Ah...the thing you ask, we cannot do in our current state as prisoners. We were only able to contact you this way by you having half our blood in your veins on your father's side. Quickly now! inscribe the symbol you see and repeat the chant we say! We're short on time and this means of contact is taxing!"** All three voices stated with urgency.

Symbols suddenly flashed behind Naruto's eyes and he suddenly lost all control of his body, he moved as if from outside his body like a puppet. Stripped of all awarness by whatever was doing this, he pulled out an item storage-summoning scroll and pulled out a black cloak that he'd kept and put it on. Then the blond quickly set about drawing an elaborate sealing array on the ground, once it was compleat, Naruto began chanting to himself under his breath in a foreign language, causing the array markings to pulse green with power and slowly began to pick up speed, the pusling going faster and faster. The bright, venomus green light that signified the ones he had been contacted by caused the eyes of his mask to glow menacingly.

Once that was done, Naruto picked the ax up off the floor and he vanished from the Elemental Nations as a whole. How he did was beyond him. Nor could he focus on what was happening as he was sent to his destination.

* * *

Naruto awoke with a start, the fevered urges of what those three voices had done to him had passed. He tried to move, and grimaced as his body protested to his commands with barricades of agony. His whole body hurt like hell and he felt drained dry of all energy. Looking around, he noticed he was a city he didn't know. He was lying in an ally with his back against the side of a house.

Groaning, he shifted to try getting comfortable as he shifted on the cobble-stone road and the brick wall he was against, he did the only thing his pulverized-feeling body agreed with him in what it would allow him to.

Sleep.

* * *

**_KEEP IN MIND THAT THE CHAPTERS FROM HERE ON IN WILL SWITCH BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN NARUTO AND WHO FOLLOWED HIM FOR A LITTLE BIT BEFORE THEY MEET UP, SO PLEASE BEAR WITH ME IF YOU FIND THAT IDEA ANNOYING, I DID SAY IT WOULD DO THAT IN THE STORY SUMMERY ALREADY._**

**_ALSO, MAKE NO MISTAKE, RAZIEL, KAIN, AND THE REST WILL BE ENCOUNTERED BY THE PAIR OF SHINOBI AT DIFFERENT POINTS, BUT FOR THE SAKE OF AVOIDING THE CONFUSING RUN AROUND WITH THE LoK TIMELINE, I'LL BE ATTEMPTING TO LIMIT OR OUTRIGHT AVOID USING TIME-TRAVEL IN THIS STORY. _**

**_ONE LAST THING: MY FAMILY'S GOING TO BE MOVING THE 21ST of this MONTH, AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO GET TO A COMPUTER FOR AN UNKNOWN LENGTH OF TIME AT THE MOMENT. TRUST ME, I THINK IT SUCKS, BUT _****CIRCUMSTANCE ISN'T LEAVING ANY CHOICE.**

**__****WITH THAT BIT OF GRIM NEWS, I REGRETFULLY BIT YOU ALL FEARWELL UNTIL LIFE GRANTS ENOUGH OF A CHANCE FOR THINGS TO IMPROVE.**


End file.
